As the pace of changing technology quickens, a robust and open national capability for technology assessment - the process of estimating the broad social, ethical, legal and economic impacts of emerging science and technology - is critical and must include public participation to complement expert analysis, says a new report, 'Reinventing Technology Assessment: A 21st Century Model'.

'Hot sounds' has one meaning to music fans and another to physicists. Count a team of researchers at Rice University among the latter, as they've discovered that acoustic waves traveling along ribbons of graphene might be just the ticket for removing heat from very tiny electronic devices.

The U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) together with the National Security Agency (NSA) is soliciting proposals for basic and applied research to advance quantum computing technology. Research areas of particular interest include: 1) Robust Solid-State Qubits and Related Technologies; 2) Quantum Information Transfer; 3) Verification/Validation and Analysis of Quantum Computing Components.

A $145-million Federal Government effort to harness the power of nanotechnology to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer is producing innovations that will radically improve care for the disease. That's the conclusion of an update on the status of the program.

The SPEDOC project will create the precursor to future devices for individualized diagnosis and monitoring of cancer therapy, which will allow the illness to be treated in earlier stages and at lower doses, reducing or preventing current secondary effects.

To continue the industry's historical trend of performance scaling, SEMATECH experts reported on integrated approaches to CMOS logic and memory device technology and 3D TSV (through silicon via) manufacturing at the International Symposium on VLSI Technology, System and Applications (VLSI-TSA) on April 26-28, 2010.

Researchers have detailed how the operation of their liposome manufacturing technique works - known as COMMAND for COntrolled Microfluidic Mixing And Nanoparticle Determination - in order to maximize its effectiveness.

Using neutron beams and atomic-force microscopes, a team of university researchers working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may have resolved a 10-year-old question about an exotic class of 'artificial muscles' - how do they work?